The Bidas Touch: $100 to Fill Up Your Gas Tank

BUCK: Again, here’s Obama’s auto czar from back in the day, Steve Rattner.

BUCK: He is a private equity guy, very wealthy individual who’s made a lot of money in the markets who is saying, “Yeah, turns out that spending too much money as a government, the government spends too much money causes inflation.” Welcome back to Clay and Buck. But the economy is not looking like it’s gonna get better anytime soon. The market is rough, rough spot right now; 401(k)s getting crushed all over the place. And let’s understand that we were told…

I mean, the promise that Biden made to get people to vote for him was, sure, normalcy and unity. Those were lies. Right now you have a White House that’s advocating for some of the most radical — particularly radical social — policies we’ve ever seen any White House standing behind, but beyond that, the radical spending, I mean, Obama, you remember, we had a full-on financial housing meltdown, and the big fight was over $900 billion and change for the “stimulus” package.

That was the discussion, and now Biden comes in and spends $2 trillion like it’s nothing. That’s double what that was. It was already added on top of the trillions in spending that were done in the real depths of the pandemic in 2020 into 2021. So they’ve got problems with this White House they don’t know how to solve, and the place where I think people are seeing the price…

I just spoke to someone yesterday, Clay, one of the guys who works in the hair and makeup department at The First where I do TV, and I said, “What are the costs…?” ’cause he drives in and out of the city every day and drives sort of standard sedan. “What’s it cost?” he says it cost a hundred dollars to fill up his gas tank.

Now, this is New York City but $100 every time. You know, when you’re working hard coming in and out of your job and you’re spending a hundred dollars on gas, people recognize that ’cause that’s running up their bills in ways that they can start to run into credit card debt, they can have real problems.

CLAY: There are lots of stickers — and some of our people out there all over the country, I’m sure, have seen this — with Joe Biden saying, “I did that,” and it’s him pointing right where the gas tax, basically, which still is like a tax, constantly is rolling, right? And there are lots of gas stations that I’ve been to of late, Buck, where I feel like they have capped a hundred dollars in gas, many of their computers, because historically you wouldn’t be able to spend $100 on gas and the concern would be.

“Hey, maybe, the pump is still rolling,” because the first few times I had it stop automatically at a hundred dollars I was like, “Wow.” You know when you sometimes end on a round number, you’re like, “Oh, that’s kind of crazy.” I’ve four different times where I stopped exactly on a hundred bucks, my gas tank is not full but it’s because they have those fail safes those safeguards when they thought.

“Oh, we’ll set it at a hundred because there will never be a time where you’re gonna have to spend over a hundred dollars to fill up your tank,” and there are a lot of us out there that are having to spend more than that and I know that feeling where you’re driving around and you’re watching those big numbers up on the board and you’re like, “Hey, if I go to this part of town I can pay 20 cents less a gallon.

“But I really need gas right now. Do I want to pull in?” and you’re starting to say the calculus and the math in your head of what you’re gonna save,” and look. At the Krogers and the Costcos and the Sam’s Clubs of the world where people are lining up. Buck, some of these lines now to get gas, it feels like what I’ve heard the 1970s were like when the lines roll all the way out into the street because people are trying to save money by going to some of these gas wholesalers just to save a little bit of money.

It is an epidemic, and as we say on the show regularly, you can’t overlook it. It is the number one issue. Everybody wants to talk about abortion, everybody wants to talk about Jan 6th, everybody wants to talk about every other issue. The one that resonates is when you can’t even fill your gas tank up for a hundred dollars, you’re furious every time you have to fill up.

BUCK: Almost two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck according to CNBC. So you’re living paycheck to paycheck. The average American household income is roughly 50K, I forget.

CLAY: Able to say more but yes.

BUCK: It’s 53 maybe, 55, something like that, American household income. And so when you start seeing an extra couple of hundred bucks here and there, every biweekly paycheck you get an extra couple hundred bucks coming out of your pocket because of the gas price, people really feel that. And then this brings us to — I don’t know if this is like a game show ,we’re gonna have to start here but is it too dumb or too dishonest?

I don’t know which one is the case with different individuals in this White House when it comes to the price of gas, the economy, the macro-economic forces, and the inflationary pressures that we’re seeing right now, because when they say things like, “We’re just going to seize the gas companies’ profits,” which is what they’re saying. This is like Maduro, Chavez, Venezuela stuff.

CLAY: This is Venezuela, that’s right.

BUCK: This is crazy. When they say they just need to pump more, if they’re patriotic they’ll just pump more gas, I mean, here is Karine Jean-Pierre, for example, play clip 8, Mike.

BUCK: Okay, Clay, I gotta ask, does Karine Jean-Pierre and by extension, I mean, Joe Biden himself — I mean, she’s speaking for him. I don’t know. Who knows more about the economy, her or him? To me it’s a toss-up. But do you think she doesn’t understand because she doesn’t care to understand in this White House overall that the refineries are basically at capacity already, and that to expand capacity would take time and deregulation and encouragement from the government, or are they just lying to everybody? Like, is this ignorance or are they…? What does this come down to?

CLAY: First of all, I would bet on ignorance to a large extent for most of the Biden administration. But I also think it’s just a desperate attempt to shift the blame. That’s what’s going on, right? Because what Joe Biden has tried to say is, “Oh, we’ve got the Putin price hikes. We got the Putin gas tax.” That hasn’t registered, right? Because Americans don’t want to accept what is a falsehood because already before the invasion of Ukraine prices were skyrocketing in this country.

And so there just needs to be something to take the blame off of the Biden White House. And it seems to me that they are flailing around trying to find one that resonates that some people in America are willing to buy. And the problem with that, Buck, is Joe Biden ran his campaign uniquely arguing, “I believe the adult in the room. I will be responsible for what goes on in the White House.”

And now that everything has gone awry and everything is collapsing, Buck, what’s the first thing he does? Find someone else who needs to be considered responsible. When you’re 18 months into your administration — for good, ill, or fair or unfair — you are responsible for everything that’s taking place in this country. And that’s why we’re not just gonna see a Red Wave, we’re gonna see a Red Tsunami.